Tom Fine watched anxiously from home at the images broadcast from news helicopters hovering above the flames and thick smoke. As fire ripped through the Redondo Beach pier late that afternoon, all Fine wanted was reassurance that the popular kite shop would be spared.

But his heart sank as he got a glimpse on TV of the rainbow-colored Delta kite that had come loose from the store’s front door. Like the other businesses ravaged by the blaze, he realized then that Sunshine Kite Co. was a casualty, too.

“I knew that the fire was close enough to burn the line at least,” he said. “They zoomed in, and I saw the kite just flying away.”

The tiny hobby shop – a mainstay since the 1970s – was one of 15 businesses destroyed on May 27, 1988, in a blaze that devastated the landmark pier.

The fire also capped a tumultuous several months for the city of Redondo Beach, which had todealt with storms that caused a total of$17 million in damage and a freak accident during its annual Super Bowl race that left a Tujunga man dead and nine people injured.

And even though the city spent millions of dollars in insurance money repairing damage to King Harbor and eventually rebuilt the pier, some say the landmark just isn’t what it used to be.

Fine, who in 1997 bought the shop where he’d worked prior to the fire, said he’s still waiting for the waterfront structure to regain its luster.

“If you look back to the 1800s, this was the heart of the city,” he said recently as he pointed to a sparse crowd millingmulling about the waterfront. “People came from everywhere. My grandparents came to fish from Burbank.”

A three-story section of the Portofino Hotel and Yacht Club collapsed under the beating from the waves. More than 50 people stranded inside were rescued by a radio news helicopter pilot.

The former Blue Moon Saloon – now Samba Brazilian Steak House – was battered by strong surf that collapsed the restaurant’s roof.

Sean Guthrie of Marina Cove, the largest leaseholder at King Harbor, said the storms shook boats loose from their moorings and left mattresses from the Portofino hotel floating in the water.

“I was working that night, and there was a wall, like, 6 feet high and 80 feet long next to the Chart House (restaurant),” said Guthrie, who at the time ran SportCenter Bar and Grill. “And this wave came by and there were just cars on top of each other.”

Officials estimated the damage at $16 million.

But even with waterfront streets, boat docks and parking lots in tatters, the city went ahead with its annual Super Bowl 10K race, altering the route and choosing a new spot for post-race events.

The location for the awards ceremony wasn’t ideal, however, as a grate in a parking structure buckled from the weight of bystanders.

One man was killed and nine other people were hurt when the cover gave way, sending them plunging three stories.

“People went from the top floor to the ground floor,” recalled Redondo Beach City Councilman Pat Aust, the former fire chief and an incident commander that day.

The grate “was never designed to hold all those people,” he said.

Ultimately, $3.6 million was paid to the victims by an insurance carrier for the Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce, which organized the race.

Then, on April 30, gale-force winds and thrashing water dealt Redondo another blow, collapsing part of the pier and tacking on $1 million in damage.

But it was the May 27 fire that did the pier in.

Just after 1 p.m. on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, residents and merchants noticed white smoke trickling from under the kitchen of The Breakers restaurant, the Daily Breeze reported.

“It turned to black smoke,” witness Lori Padelford said. “Within three minutes, you could see the flames reflected on the water and flames coming out of The Breakers then the explosions.”

Aust once likened the speed of blazeof the blaze to “lighting a burner on a big griddle.” And as the smoke billowed up above the beach city, he added, “they had a SigAlert on the San Diego Freeway.”

The fire was contained by about 4p.m., Aust said, but the damage was done. The blaze knocked out 105 feet of the horseshoe-shaped pier and destroyed 15 businesses, including The Breakers and The Edge restaurants.

Cattleman’s Steak House was saved but was washed away by a storm two days later.

“Not a good year,” Aust said of 1988. “We had over $30 million worth of damage.”

In the days following, city leaders cast their loss as an opportunity to rebuild. Residents voted in 1990 to fix the landmark, and a new $10.5million concrete horseshoe that arcs over the ocean opened in 1996.

That was about the time Fine bought the kite shop he’d grown to love, inspired by the influx of visitors after the grand reopening. But he said the crowds dwindled soon after, and he and his wife, Ani, probably see less revenue in every year that passes.

Some business owners blame the lighter foot traffic on the fact that the city never replaced all the buildings it lost around the horseshoe. The empty pad at the end of the pier is meant to house a new restaurant, but the city still hasn’t found any takers.

A few years before his death last April, longtime restaurateur Tony Trutanich – who built his first pier eatery in 1952, followed by a second in 1969 – told the Breeze both businesses “are doing fine.”

“But never like we were,” he added. “Everything was going well until that big storm in 1988.”

The city recently hired a firm to analyze the waterfront’s somewhat disjointed layout and create a long-range vision for the pier and nearby International Boardwalk. Consultants suggested incorporating vintage-style designs and presented the results of an asset management plan designed to attract investors to long-vacant leaseholds.

In conjunction, the City Council made a list of immediate needs for the pier, such as improved seating, lighting and landscaping.

Fine said he hopes something will work for the sake of his business and the city, which shares revenue with waterfront leaseholders.

“This is a gold mine,” he said. “We just need to get it in peoples’people’s minds that this is a great place to be.”